You hit the nail on the head with "current". Science is evolving too and we're always discovering new theories, modifying old ones etc. Was once a time when people believed the universe revolved around the earth and so on. We're only just beginning to get to grips with quantum physics and we've barely begun with understanding Dark Matter. Our knowledge is far from complete. So it's possible the Darwinian model, as applicable as it is on Earth, might not be the only way life can evolve elsewhere. That said, I do agree it's likely to be a model that's replicated elsewhere.
Poll: Where is everyone?
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You hit the nail on the head with "current". Science is evolving too and we're always discovering new theories, modifying old ones etc. Was once a time when people believed the universe revolved around the earth and so on. We're only just beginning to get to grips with quantum physics and we've barely begun with understanding Dark Matter. Our knowledge is far from complete. So it's possible the Darwinian model, as applicable as it is on Earth, might not be the only way life can evolve elsewhere. That said, I do agree it's likely to be a model that's replicated elsewhere.
Perhaps because the galaxy is so huge, they just haven't explored this area yet? Or perhaps they did so several million years ago (or even 100 years ago), before humans had the equipment to receive their communications and/or see their ship in space pass by. If an organism had the ability to travel through space I'm sure the scanning technology they would have may must be pretty good. For all we know a ship passed by the edge of our solar system, had a quick scan and moved off. We are making the assumption that we (and Earth) are so special that alien life would stop by and take a closer look.
Perhaps we aren't? Perhaps there are millions of planets with life equivalent to us and we just aren't that interesting, even if an alien "ship" passed by our solar system. Now that's a rather sobering thought. Perhaps we really are just ants to other more advanced alien species, not even worth taking a closer look.
Anyway, as I said, more a mind splurge/philosophical muddle, but perhaps there are some interesting points in it people can either pick apart or ponder on.
Or perhaps they are desperately trying to communicate with us, but on a level we just don't or can't understand. There might be ships and space stations surrounding this planet, ready to destroy it at any time, but we have no way of knowing.
I love talking about this sort of thing
could wonder and discuss for hours.I don't see how other evolution models would work though, consciousness takes a lot of atoms to form in the correct way, that takes a long long time, we know the brain is the most complicated thing in the universe pretty much, more complicated than a star for example, it wouldn't have got to this level of intellect had it not being for the gap between surviving and dying which evolution pushes. I think evolution is essential for advanced intellect.
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none of the handful of extinct species we catalogued to date died next to playstation remote or looked even remotely capable of wearing jeans. And that's about the only proof we would accept at this stage of our intelligence. That's about right, right?
I would accept a simple tool or bowl but guess what? - nothing.
Would this imaginary intelligent animal be humanoid in shape or could it be a jellyfish?
Soldato
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Or perhaps they are desperately trying to communicate with us, but on a level we just don't or can't understand. There might be ships and space stations surrounding this planet, ready to destroy it at any time, but we have no way of knowing.
I love talking about this sort of thing
Very true.
Currently we are basing our approach for the direct search for extra terrestrial intelligent life on radio waves (SETI), but at the same time I refuse to believe that the pinnacle of wireless communication is something we first started using in 1900 (the first electromagnetic/radio transmission). Surely there must be a better way of sending signals wirelessly than relatively slow electromagnetic communication?
If we ever start exploring space properly we will need to work out how (if possible) we can communicate faster than the speed of light, otherwise the major delays in communication could be a major problem. It's what, 30 minutes each way to Mars, let alone manned missions to planets further out, where the time delay can be a few hours.
Soldato
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Speaking of the roaring 1900s: gravitational time dilation says hello.
On Earth this is insignificant for day-to-day communication, in space, hmm, there are pretty massive bodies out there and also large distances between masses.
Making use of Quantum Entanglement might be one way to communicate faster than light, although the scientific opinion currently seems to be it's not possible.
I've often thought this too. It's perfectly possible the airwaves are alive with galaxy-wide chatter, we're just not smart enough to have invented the galactic radio yet
So far, to date we managed to catalogue approx 950,000 species sharing Earth's ecosystem with us, right here, right now. It's very much work in progress, as we still keep discovering new species at a pace of up to 10,000 per annum in some years.
We also managed to discover approx 700 species of extinct species as fossils. Many of the species we discovered and somewhat group together did not even inhabit earth at the same time. For example, despite movie myths the two most common dinos on toy shelves - the nasty Tyrannosaurus Rex and his long necked veggie chewing friend Apatosaurus never actually met each other out there in the wild, not just because of geographical issues, but because there was about a 80 million years of age gap between them give or take.
If we presume that life on earth 70 millions or 170 millions of years ago was even half as well established as it is now (and there is no reason to think that it wasn't) then us finding 100 or 200 fossils created in specific environmental conditions, out of half a million to a million species species possibly existing within any of the given periods, as a sample, is almost insignificant.
150 millions years after our civilisation ends and everything we ever built or made long turns to dust, thousands of millennia after tens of miles of dust compacted and plowed by multiple ice ages cover and rip through all the changes we ever made to the rivers and lands, half a galactic year after the last satellite runs our of fuel and the last piece of space junk gets knocked out of orbit by random meteor and burns in the atmosphere, some new intelligent species inhabiting this planet may one day find few fossils of elephants, whales and rhinos, with no tools next to them, no clay pots anywhere - they'll conclude that perhaps they are the first intelligent life on this nice planet...
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Actually there are 8.7 million species with us right here right now.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110823180459.htm
Relative to what?
As relative to all known speed possible its the fastest.
Genuinly curious as to what you are comparing it to to call C slow?
I guess that's including flora as well as fauna, but never the less - I love the number, love the odds.
I doubt it. In the future, when humans are long gone, they are still going to find a metric **** ton of rubbish we've left behind - plastics, metals, radioactive material, you name it. So even if somehow all of our buildings and industry left no mark (unlikely) our waste would. It doesn't all "turn to dust", the footprint that humans have left on this earth is permanent.
By contrast, there is absolutely ZERO trace of any other previous intelligent / technological life in the fossil records, geology or anywhere else. ZERO.
C'mon now...
I like the idea youre presenting, there's something about it, but it's just not plausible. If we can dig up dino fossils, then 150m year from now, our future civilisation will dig up ~ a billion cars. If there was a lost civilisation as advanced as ours, we would have markers for it. We don't see any though.
Current opinion can change. I'll be optimistic and say we will overcome that. If we don't then it's probably not going to be an issue anyway, because we also need to overcome various other speed/velocity related issues to get anywhere outside our solar system.
Relative to spacial distances. Light is the fastest thing we know, but it still takes 2.5million light years to get from our nearest neighbouring galaxy.
If we want to be exploring space outside our solar system we need to be looking at a faster form of communication.
I've wanted to ask this question for a while but it doesn't warrant it's own thread, however the images above give a pretty good example of my question.
The habitable zone, as it's known. Is it taking into account things being able to live in -100c to +200c or something. I ask this because the "zone" seems rather large, i.e maybe hundreds of thousands of miles either side, right??
However if that is the case, why do we have such a massive temperature swing from summer to winter of 30c+ when we only move 5-10k miles (probably less) closer to the sun do to our angled spin..
Anyone?
The habitable zone, as it's known. Is it taking into account things being able to live in -100c to +200c or something. I ask this because the "zone" seems rather large, i.e maybe hundreds of thousands of miles either side, right??
However if that is the case, why do we have such a massive temperature swing from summer to winter of 30c+ when we only move 5-10k miles (probably less) closer to the sun do to our angled spin..
Anyone?
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While I agree with you there regarding us, it all depends on how big and how intelligent the civilisation was. Take pre industrial revolution days - say a sudden catastrophic overtook us in 1750 and wiped out all humans. In 200 million years would another intelligent species recognise us for what we were? "Just" 500 million people, with fairly advanced tools and techniques. Would they find any evidence of us after all that time. Perhaps, but current evidence suggests it would probably be more fluke than judgement.
Even if we all died today a future civilisation would probably only discover the fossilised bones of someone that died in a bog/marsh/river flood, with perhaps a small remnant of metal nearby, which would be all that was left of a phone after a couple of hundred million years of pressure and heat*. Remember, other than detailed analysis of a few fossils, we still have very little understanding of the soft tissue or even colour/covering of the vast majority of dinosaurs we know about. Most of those images you see of T-Rex and the other dinos are extrapolated from a few tail bones, a leg bone and perhaps if they are lucky part of the upper part of a skull. The shape, flesh and musculature of these creatures are mostly extrapolated from the bone shapes left behind by tendons and the use of analogies, such as modern birds.
As I said before, it's very, very rare for any entire skeletons to be discovered for any creature of a reasonable size. Everything from predation and disarticulation due to water flow and erosion of their final resting place give rise to that. Would an intelligent being in 200 million years time realise the significance of the slightly iron/gold/silver rich area near a skeleton, that is, if they were lucky enough to find one of the few that were actually preserved, and that persons remains weren't scattered to the wind?
As I said, unlikely, but not beyond the realms of possibility.
*Talking here specifically about individuals, not the remains of our civilisation, which was discussed in my previous post on the matter. Pre industrial civilisations would not have left the same marks in the geological record. In fact it's probably only since WW2 that we have left significant marks.
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Soldato
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In quick and dirty layman's terms: A planet's relative position to its star and orbit are not the only things which influence temperature variation: the atmosphere, geological composition, size and mass matter also. Each key variable that affects temperature and seasons is also subject to several planetary cycles from gas exchange to continental crust renewal and drift that feed into the final result.
And of course there are special cases that can miss one or more variables and cycles.